Hello, I Love You

The first time I heard his name I thought I was going to die. My friend, C, had just gotten her license and we were driving to another friends house when he yells from the back seat, “Hey is that Sean Farrar?!” C comes screeching to a halt, and we’re all choked by the seat belts that are supposed to protect us. “Where?!” she sounds almost like her tires did on the asphalt. “Oh, guess it wasn’t him” our friend laughs… Now I thought C and I were close, at this point in high school, I thought we were best buds, but you know how teenage girls can be. The point is, I’d never heard about this guy before and obviously C has a major crush on him. “Farrar,” I say, “what the hell kind of name is that?” C doesn’t hear me. The next day at school (or next week, It’s been a long time, folks) My friend W comes up to C and I and introduces me to the infamous Sean Farrar. He’s not my type, so I give him a friendly smile and not much else…

The next year when we were Juniors in high school, I was feeling the usual “my best friends ditching me for a boy” blues, even though I had a boyfriend, so what did I care, right? Anyway, we were in band, and I guess C had pressured Sean to join so she could spend more time with him. C was like that. Her whole family got involved in Sean’s life and it looked like things were getting kind of serious. I tried to make nice with him, I tried to impress him with my nice truck and stereo system and string bikini. Lol Hey! I was a teenage girl…ANYWAY Our band took a trip to San Francisco that year. Me, C and two other friends were rooming together… there is a whole other story that happened right here, but I’m not going to get into it. It has nothing to do with the point of this post. To make a long story short, C and I had a falling out over Sean and she told me we weren’t friends anymore. It broke my heart and I HATED Sean. As far as I was concerned, he had broken me and C up. Senior year, C moved to Texas and I heard through the grapevine that Sean was moving with them.

Senior year, the guy I was dating was having a party. I got all dressed up and picked up my friend K and we were off! When we got there though, I was greeted by my man in the driveway. “Now, don’t let this ruin your good time, but C is here.” Ugh. I guess she was here visiting. I had already had a run-in with her earlier that summer where I wound up talking a bunch of shit on her and Sean…So I say “fuck it, I belong here more than she does” and walk in. My friend W, the one who initially introduced me to Sean, comes up to me “Dude, dude, I found another guitarist for our band! Sean Farrar!” I’m like “Goddamnit, W, first of all I HATE that guy’s guts and second, doesn’t he live with C in Texas?” W says “Nah, check this out, they broke up and he never went. I asked him if he had any beef with you and he said no.” I give him a look like ‘Well you already asked the motherfucker so what can I do about it?’

I make my way to the back yard where everyone was smoking a joint. I, however, did not partake in high school. Oh no, I was a good girl. Now, not so much. Lol I see that Sean is sitting the absolute furthest away from C he can be. I look over at C and say Hi, to which she gets up, storms through the house and out to the front porch. “Ooh kaay” I say. Didn’t realize I upset her so badly… Ha! What an ego I had. I decide to follow her and find her crying, waiting for her mom to pick her up. I ask her what’s wrong and she says “I didn’t know who was going to be here.” And I start to apologize sarcastically for being at my man’s house and she says “Not you, Sean!” and she tells me how they broke up and all that BS and her mom comes and picks her up and that’s that.

Relieved, I return to the party in the back, walk right up to Sean and slap him hard on the knee. “What the fuck?!” is his response, but he’s smiling a little. I said “That was all your fault, she was upset because of you!” I say fake crying. I was such a bitch. That little slap on the knee, rather that small moment between Sean and I, I’ve since referred to as “Tag. You’re it.” I don’t remember much else about that night but after that, Me, Sean and W made dates to jam regularly. Problem with that is, W loved the ladies and if he could make plans with a chick after school, then it wound up just being me and Sean at our little “Jam sessions” and very rarely did a guitar make it out of its case. Now nothing was going on, we just hung out, listened to music and talked. I was still seeing someone, so I wasn’t trying to start anything.

Sean’s parents were divorced and his dad had started seeing someone who lived in Fresno, so he made regular trips up there on the weekends, taking Sean’s siblings with him. So naturally, all the parties were at Sean’s house. I went to all of them, in support of my “band mate” but I always had my man with me. Except for one time when I went alone and spent the night stealing Sean’s belt and flirting with him shamelessly. He was drunk, so I figured it didn’t matter. Hanging out after school led to instant messaging and emails later on at night and I really started to get to know Sean.

One day, while IM’ing, Sean says to me “I’m listening to a song that reminds me of you.” I was already kind of crushing on him and that just made it worse…he also told me about something he’d read where you take two coins, one in each hand. One represents you and the other represents someone you have a relationship with. You toss them in the air and however close they land indicates the level of friendship/love or whatever…it sounds totally corny, but still. He said he did it, thinking of me and one coin landed on top of the other. I thought that was amazing! Come on, I was a 17 year old girl!! Lol I loved shit like that, and took my horoscope very seriously! In fact, when I decided I liked Sean and I wanted to break it off with the guy I was seeing for him, I had some chick at school read my tarot. Sigh…..kids.

Halloween 2000, Me, my friend K, Sean and his friend all hung out together. I had totally ditched my man, but didn’t tell him I was hanging out with Sean because I knew I was going to break it off with him, I just didn’t know how to tell him. This would be the third time I’d broken up with him for another guy. Anyway, Sean’s friend left and I took K and Sean home… I dropped K off first and then spent over 2 hours sitting in front of Sean’s house talking. I learned so much about him and thought he was an amazing person who had been sold short his whole life. Everything I thought I knew about him when he was dating C was wrong. I was falling HARD. This boy was getting under my skin in ways I’d never felt before.

November 1, I’m hanging out at Sean’s, W has ditched us for a female AGAIN. We’re chillin, talking, and I decide to go get my guitar our of my truck. As I’m walking down the driveway with Sean, my man pulls up. Oh shit. It’s not like we were doing anything, but still. I could tell by the look on his face that he thought something was going on. I walk up to the window, he is visibly upset. He wants me to get in the car, so I tell Sean I’ll meet him inside. We talk it out, I tell him I am interested in Sean and that nothing is going on, I was trying to figure out how to tell him without hurting him so badly. He recounted the two other times I’d done the exact same thing. He asked why I didn’t love him. I told him he wa attractive and sweet and an awesome boyfriend, we just didn’t click. Sounds dumb, but that’s the only explanation I could give. I felt horrible. He was such a nice guy, but I couldn’t get Sean out of my head. He left, and I went back into Sean’s… “you’ll never guess what happened!” but he knew. I wish I could say I ran to Sean and we kissed passionately…but as you read my posts, you’ll realize that is simply not our style. I’m sure we just exchanged smiles, and went about our business.

The next couple weeks, I hung out with Sean every single day. His Dad was a welding inspector for Disneyland, so we got to go for free. I took my truck so we could leave earlier than the rest of his family and spend a little time together. When we left, we went to Del Taco and had dinner. I remember there being some incident involving a sesame seed… lol Anyway, later on that night, I told him I had a band competition out of town and I couldn’t hang out with him the next night. He replied by saying something to the effect of “you don’t have to tell me, it’s not like we’re a couple.” TSK! I was hurt! I’m thinking “well then why the fuck am I spending all my time with your ass?!” I can’t remember what transpired immediately afterward… it was through email, I think I told him I was hurt, and he kind of snapped back at me saying if that bothered me and I didn’t want to be with him he “wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.” DAMN that hurt my feelings so much. But next time I saw him, he had printed me a card to say he was sorry, and that he did consider us a couple. It was official. November 12, 2000 Sean and Shalene become an item. Aren’t our names cute? The novelty never wears off… Especially when people mistake us for twins. Lol Know what else? At this point, we still hadn’t even kissed!

Two weeks later, we were sitting on the couch at my house watching a movie. I looked over at Sean and smiled. “What?” he asked smiling back. I say sheepishly “I want to tell you something, but I’m scared.” He says “Me too. You go first.” I take a deep breath and say “I think I’m falling in love with you.” He laughs and says “Well I was going to say that I could see myself marrying you and being with you forever.” My heart soared…

June 20, 2005 Sean and Shalene become Mr. and Mrs. What the hell kind of name is Farrar.

To be continued…….for many years to come. :)